so you know how I mentioned the entrepreneur Gene so that usually comes along with a lack of organization you know we were profitable in every single country we Dr risked every major risk then it kind of becomes boring right bfm 89.9 good morning and welcome to open for business the show that dives into the journeys and ventures of entrepreneurs and Business Leaders this morning on the show jite wahedna the founder and chairman of wahed an investment platform that caters to the needs of the Muslim Community by offering Sharia compliant investment Solutions following his experience working on Wall Street judine left his lucrative career and founded wahed in 2017 in a bid to provide an investment platform that allows Muslims to avoid interest-based Investments today W's call service includes a diversified Sharia compliant portfolio giving investors exposure to equities gold and other assets starting from New York the company has set up 11 offices and is in operational in four of them including one here in KL along the way they've raised about 75 to $82 million with the most recent round being a series B round in 2022 for $50 million valuating the company at $300 million here in Malaysia while it's been around for 5 years getting its dim or digital Investment Management license from the SC back in 2019 today we're going to get into jite and wahit journey from its Origins and how it's evolved D over the last few years to jite handing over the CEO role just a few months back and key Ambitions ahead uh jite welcome to the show and welcome to Gale thank you russan so we've obviously had a bit of a chat outside and there's going to be some interesting things that we're going to cover today but I found online that this idea all kind of started off in a taxi ride that you had back in 2015 now you can't always trust 100% what you read on the internet so question number one is that a true story question number two what was it about that conversation that inspired all this then yeah you know that's that's absolutely a a true story so in New York especially in Manhattan you know you just jump into cabs all the time and there's a lot of immigrants you know and being a Muslim being a minority in New York you know it's always nice talking to the taxi drivers you have some familiarity type of thing so you stra up uh conversations quite regularly and I remember quite vividly you know I I was taking a cap to work and uh we started talking you know the the driver was from Bangladesh and uh he was asking me what I do as you know the conversation goes and I told him I'm in finance so it just naturally evolves to oh you know what do I do with my money I have so much in savings and uh it's all in Apple stock it's like wait why is it all an Apple stock and he said he came to America with his whole family and his entire life savings and then he didn't know what to do with the money he didn't want to keep it into at a bank because he's you know a practicing Muslim and he doesn't want on interest and he didn't know where to invest it so he went to the Imam to ask him what to do with the money and the IM of the mosque you know the religious leader yeah uh of course uh you know it turned out to be very lucky advice CU Apple did weirdly well better than any portfolio I can think of but from a risk reward Spectrum you shouldn't be putting all your money in in one stock uh so yeah he put all his money in apple because Sharia you know the Imam told him that is Sharia compliant and just because of his faith he gambled his entire life savings I shouldn't say gambled he invested his entire life savings in one stock which we as Financial professionals really caution against you should be diversifying I mean that stresses me out just hearing that it's very stressful in a parallel world I actually sold my Apple stock back in 2017 because it became such a huge part of my portfolio it was 90% of my assets and from a risk reward perspective you got to pair it down from there um so that's this I kind of kicked started right but you already had this uh career on Wall Street um you uh gave that up basically that lucrative care career there to build this what was behind I guess that conviction and confidence to pursue this was this something that you thought about at the at the time because not everyone thinks about this before they jump in so you know to be honest with you there's no one specific reason right with life you have many different factors you have family you have work you have your stress levels you have your academic background you have your faith right so everything is has a role to play you could say in that decision- making so it's hard for me to say one specific thing uh but to give you a bit of a background you know I I could tell that the work I was in very fastpaced you learn a lot very lucrative like you won't believe how much money is is actually in New York uh but you have no time and you feel or or I felt as a person trying to be a good Muslim I felt that I'm going away from my religion and that was a really big part in my decision- making saying you know what's more important to me and I you know can't act like it's a you know zero to 100 story because I do come from quite a well-off background so I was in a comfortable enough position where I could decide to not pursue only money and do something that'll make me feel a little more fulfilled but at the same time also Al challenged me intellectually because it was something cool it was something new it was something that had never been done at the time uh so those are a few factors that played into why I started W then one of the interesting parts of your journey one of the many interesting parts of the journey is the fact that you've done this as a solo founder as a solo founder you've gone to four markets you've got licenses in 10 uh different geographies you've raised between 75 to $82 million Bas based on press reports and all doing that without preferred stock you did that all with common stock the conventional wisdom would be you need at least one other founder to kind of diversify that risk um why didn't you bring someone along for the journey did you not find the right person to take this on with or was it always a decision to not do this you know what's interesting is that it goes a lot into human psychology and how people are and if you look at a lot of entrepreneurs and their personality type they are very autocratic and it's very hard to find that specific let's say entrepreneur Gene you know as they say uh to be Democratic from day one in fact I don't think it's possible and and I highly advise people to be solo Founders because there's no stress in life uh you can take a decision all your investors end up being your partners anyways they shareholders as you are a shareholder because what does founder really mean right it's just your responsibility and when someone comes and invests into your company as a shareholder then it's their responsibility too and when there's an employee it's their responsibility too so it's just varying degrees of responsibility I do not feel there like the 50/50 split ever Works someone always has have has to have majority even in companies if you see companies that are too spread out in the shareholding they become really slow very tough to take decisions they become bureaucratic it really helps when you have a single decision maker that's why if you look at these really fancy private Equity firms they only take controlling Stakes mhm so if it was wise to be dividing up and running completely Democratic organizations why do the people most successful at making money insist on having control Stakes so what you mention as like conventional wisdom is is more I'd say VC conventional wisdom and that's because the VC's job in life is to maximize the irr of their portfolio and the biggest way to do that if you look at the math behind it is to drisk the companies they invest in and just try and minimize their failure now the biggest failure is obviously the guy you're betting on right you're betting on the person what if he leaves what if he decides he doesn't want to do it or do something else that's why having more than one founder D risks that major risk the VC has and I think that's why they like or maybe insist upon more than one founding team member but for the entrepreneur himself I definitely don't think it's it's better I think you've made a really great point right because sometimes you got to look at it from whose perspective are we talking about here now you've raised a lot of money um 82 75 to $82 million depending on uh the Press reports um and you've done so as a solo founder how much convincing that you need to do in order to get people on board with this don't worry I I'm a solo founder but you know I'm not going to burn all the money you're investing with me like how did you how did that conversation go you know I'm a strong believer in putting your head down and doing the work and if your product is good enough money will find you uh and the way that works is let's say you get one investor and you're a really good company he's either going to invest himself or get 10 more of his friends because he he looks good bringing them a good deal uh so there's no death of money if you are a good entrepreneur or good enough of a business I shouldn't say you're know entrepreneur because some people find it harder and easier and there's different money in different places we started in America uh America has a ridiculous amount of money especially for VC they also have a culture of taking risks which is from what I've seen and I may be wrong not prevalent in Malaysia no you're about right that's a common complaint that we hear yeah so so Malaysia has more of the European like the British mentality right which is very let's take it slow easy not take any risk which is why there's no taxine in Europe either and they're all confused why is there no tax because nobody takes a decision right if even today if we're talking to organization who wants to invest and they're going to decide 9 months later sorry we're not going to be around that long you need to decide in the next 2 weeks right regardless of how big the ticket size I remember our first American investor made a decision in maybe a week and a half and sent us a million dollars the next week like it it's just unbelievably quick and I'm saying early stages so I do feel the culture of investors has a lot to do with it now 9 years on from the original idea and that taxi ride that you had in New York in Manhattan uh earlier this year you officially handed over the role of CEO to uh Mosin sidiki who was a CEO last year um why have you handed over the role of CEO and elevated yourself to Chairman talk to us a little bit about that uh so you know I I want to uh summarize a bit in terms of different people being good at different things so you know how I mentioned the entrepreneur Gene uh so that usually comes along with a lack of organization you know more creativity um spont you know people being spontaneous uh Mosen is a an operator that that's what we refer to it you know in the industry uh he's a machine he he takes companies from 10 million to 100 million Revenue uh all day every day he's done it twice before that's what he's built to do he knows exactly how to do it um entrepreneurs like to build from zero to one right so my job was proving that something nobody else thought was possible is actually possible so the moment we had product Market fit we were profitable in every single country we drisk every major risk then it kind of becomes boring right then it's like now okay you've done three countries now do 30 countries it's just where's the fun in that so not to saying is it's not fun work I mean he he has a fun job and all that in case he's listening but I want want to do you know the the new countries the new challenges the new products uh and I get to do that in this new role you could say when the day-to-day operations are completely with Mosen uh because you won't believe running a global financial institution how many things there are to deal with uh Regulators compliance operations the support side it's it's nonstop firefighting every single day and it's you have to be very disciplined all right so he has that personality type he's very smart he's very good at it there's no doubt in my mind he's better than me at doing that he's a good manager right so uh he has skill sets I don't have and for this next phase of growth and this is a very nice phase for anyone to be part of because look you know it works it's D risk and now you just grow it and make it something you know huge inshallah right so I feel that my skills can be better utilized uh trying to create new products trying to figure out getting into markets that other people haven't figured out yet and and that's how I'd explain why we did that you know for lack of better words you're a builder and he's the operator correct he's a scaler at this point um now a key challenge that comes about when you bring in professional management is alignment of goals Vision incentives um how how will that work with MOS how how do you get him bought into the the larger goal here yeah so so there's a few things and and and some are particular to us right so we are a Sharia compliant institution uh we are very values driven uh our vision of the company is to try and create products that help the Muslim Community uh get away from interest which we feel is a big sin and we feel there's a lot of spiritual reward in doing so uh Mosen and I both really appreciate that specific benefit that we are not able to get in any other role or any other business so that's unique um now in terms of aligning interest so the American way again might be a bit different in Europe and here I don't know but the American way is you really incentivize with options right stock options so it's basically the private Equity way if if you do well and you hit your targets everyone wins you get rich I get rich Sher gets Rich everyone goes home right and if you don't do well you don't get anything and we find someone else to try and figure it out so that really aligns incentives uh again the more uh you know slower companies would not do that they just pay a salary a higher salary here as a driver here of that that that's not what we're into we're saying look you come in you have a 5year stretch uh you hit these goals and we take this company we 10x this company and it's already big uh so he's come to do that again he's very good at it he's done it before for really big Global institutions a lot of them in finance uh so we're quite confident in his ability to do so let's go back uh uh to the beginning here when you first started executing upon this mission on this journey to build this company what did what hit look like when you first started so I was very young when I started I was maybe 23 years old wow right and uh so for me I was very naive right the naivity of Youth it's wow how hard can this be right like just throw together a platform manage money everyone needs it uh so I remember first thing you have to do is get a regulatory license so how do you usually do it today if we were to apply for license you'd get lawyers you'd get this you know you figured long timeline all of that stuff uh what do I do I fill out a form right so I'm like okay let me find someone else's forms advs and I make my own uh cuz you don't have that much money you don't have that much capital and I just applied for a license and uh you know got a few people I knew in the industry to be part of it oh can you be the compliance guy can you and uh we got the SEC license so first time round probably the fastest license we've ever gotten till today was when I just without drafted in myself copy pasting stuff right so whatever lawyers say copy pasting is still the best way to do it I mean I know they need to justify their jobs but it's either their copy pasting or we copy pasting so it worked we got the SEC license and then I have a business plan I have a license and now you need to actually build the infrastructure in the tech which cost money so again reaching out to few contacts I know and I remember there was a gentleman from mackenan company at the time uh he was a partner he was uh the global head for Islamic financial services and he was the first one to really understand the concept right and the business plan the idea you can say and he took me he was like you know if this works it's a bit crazy and then he took me to someone else took me to someone else and the next day these three guys called me saying look Jan uh this uh you know really makes sense we've built all these Islamic Banks all the governments hire us and we know the industry we know basically everyone in the industry so uh there's no Financial products for ret sale no one's ever solved this and uh IFH you can do it it's going to be huge so we want to invest with you we want to become your partners here's a million dollars and they were you could say the first Angel Investors uh so that's I would say day one and then we use that money to of course build the Prototype platform now a million dollars is a lot of money but not in financial services not in America right so with a million dollars you need to build Financial infrastructure a tech stack have the ini Team all of that so our prototype was a simple website it was a web portal and we had connected you know to the brokers in the back and uh we launched with that and uh luckily it was enough for an MVP so we got the traction we clearly saw the product Market fit and that's when the First Institutional Investor contacted us saying uh you know I don't like basically they said we don't think you realize how big this opportunity is you can make this really Global so how much money do you need and the rest uh yeah wrest of History so that's the early days and it really did kind of fly off the handle once you started his journey one call leads to another leads to another and you raise the money you needed $1 million at the start to build a product they didn't go as far as you with one o doesn't go as far as we think it is does in the US uh so raised more to do so now the way you talk about it sounds like it was all just an easy Joy Ride what was the key the big challenges at the start right what was the big biggest challenge uh getting this up and running I think the biggest challenge was uh people just not agreeing with the hypothesis because as a Founder you have an idea and you have to be stubborn enough to basically say I'm right and every single industry professional is wrong that's not an easy thing to do or say and chances are you are wrong right because everyone's saying it's not possible so I remember at this start going to basically every senior person in Islamic Finance I could reach and one after the other they were all like this is a silly idea it doesn't make any sense no one needs this it's not going to work uh even when I went to them with ETF saying look there's a more efficient way to have funds why do you guys have mutual funds charging 3% it makes no sense just have passive and like no impossible it's not going to work so unfortunately we we didn't get that you could say reassurance from the industry at all early days so all of our initial investors who did understand the data and the business plan they weren't actually Muslim or Islamic Finance people I'd say it was very interesting right so there was a yeah they knew the value of a good idea and the potential size of the market and they even understood the Islamic hypothesis it's it's not rocket science you know it's we want to keep our money away from this and invest in simple things and okay yeah you look at the data and it makes sense so it's it's a bit I'd say uh sad from one point that our community doesn't take that risk that we need to to innovate but uh times are changing things are changing and I think uh for us to be able to be quote unquote successful with something I I hope will change people's mindsets and you know allow more entrepreneurs to try new ideas in terms of products you've done quite a few things um ETF you launched in 2019 very cleverly named hit L uh or Halal you've also got a non- us one which is Uma if I got that correct that was launched later outside the ETFs you obviously have the robo advisor which the Malaysian audience will be more familiar with u equ crowdfunding as well I think that's why Ventures a bank branch that you acquired in uh in London as well as a gold backed debit card a lot of things working here what determines product development at wad it's a very interesting question and it's a odd answer not the usual but there's there's two things okay one is the problem we're solving requires multiple products and that problem is we're trying to keep people's money away from interest from all aspects of their lives so we've actually mapped out where in their lives they are exposed to interest so there's the whole investment piece there's the mortgages there's you know the banking piece there's many different parts of your life where you're exposed to interest and we innovate product to minimize exposure to interest or ideally just remove exposure to interest from all aspects of your life as a practicing Muslim so that's I'd say the key uh factor in deciding what products to push the secondary factor which you could argue is more important as a for-profit business is unit economics so we really do look at uh how will this affect our unit economics and when I say that I mean you know Revenue per user the cash flow the lifetime value the retention uh so that's I'd say a big part of our decision making so let's talk a little bit about that because the the robo advisor business itself uh notoriously difficult uh to get to profitability or break even I think benman and uh wealth front um had took over took about a decade more or less and even then they had to go to other products to do so uh I spoke to stash a few months back they are in the on the way to profitability um we're talking outside and you are now profitable in all four of your oper markets as a group still not profitable yet how did you do that so every single one of our countries is profitable so the proof is in the pudding we know this works we know it's profitable uh what's very interesting now is the fourth country which we just launched the UAE and what we're trying to do and it's a test for ourselves really is to see how quickly we can break even that country we just launched a few months ago and we believe we can break even in the first year and we are well on our way so we should be able to break even in the first year of operations now what that will allow us to do is something pretty crazy it basically allows us to Just Launch every single country you can think of uh because the break even in one year now there's not many uh fintech companies or financial firms that I know of in fact there's none who can break even in a year it just doesn't exist so we've built these economies of scale uh that are pretty unmatched we we're super efficient and lean margins are really good and I think a big key parts of this is mixing a very sticky product like Robo advisory like Asset Management where people stay for a very long period of time they save for retirement they save to buy a car they safe to go on hudge you know they save for a long term things uh with more immediate cash flow products like the ones we're pushing now like crowdfunding where you get an immediate placement fee which is day one cash flow and then nothing really after that right so um Robo advisory everyone starts with a small amount of money they're building up their savings spot and so we are taking a percent of that it's going to take you years to make back the money you spend just to acquire them so in the long scheme 10 years 20 years of your lifetime sure it still looks good you'll have your LTV to C good enough but who's going to throw that money down a well right it's going to be very very expensive uh so for us we figured out that we need to combine it with products that have the nearest cash flow stream and that was uh the placement fees with the alternative Investments right the Equity crowdfunding Real Estate crowdfunding that we do now so we pushed it in the UK worked like a charm it's absolutely gorgeous now so it's under oneyear payback period we have the most ridiculous LTV to CAC number anyone's ever seen I think it's like 100x something stupid it's just way too good at this point like good is supposed to be anything over three uh and USS because all of our growth is or organic it's all referral based and we only have these Global brand influencers and Global branding our Global CAC is ridiculously low like I I haven't seen anyone even come close to it you know so uh it allows our unit economics to be really unmatched and allows us to scale profitably and keep launching countries so next year we stop launching countries a few years ago to figure out this whole product Suite monetization all that infrastructure piece now that's done it's done very well we're going to go back to launching countries and that's the fun part right so we get to just every 3 months launch a new country and and we're very built to do that what does the path ahead look like in terms of determining What markets you want to go to because you've got a mix year you've got developed markets like the US and the UK you've got a mix year in Malaysia talk to us about that strategy so you know uh our strategy is very heavy on our values and the whole faith-based aspect that I was touching upon so unlike most businesses who will optimize for revenue and profitability uh we optimize for how many people we can get to minimize interest exposure which is a bit weird and crazy uh if we wanted to make money honestly we would not have left America uh working in one country is much cheaper much easier infrastructure way less regulatory risk and there's more than enough money in America to go to tens of billions of dollars even with the Muslim Community they're just ridiculously rich so the reason we did this whole Global thing is to be able to go to 50 countries anywhere there's someone who wants to minimize their interest exposure we want to launch so what we've done is we've ranked countries by literally the number of people who would want such a product so you're looking at India India has 300 million Muslims it has no Islamic Bank and now they're in the middle class it's a great Market um is that the best from a financial perspective uh maybe maybe not I don't really know you know it actually is cuz it's done quite well um but Nigeria for example Indonesia we've got is there it's not cuz they going to be huge margins it's going to be tiny margins but we feel it's a responsibility so our business is always going to be tiptoeing that line between do we take decisions only for money or do we take decisions for Faith and we're trying very hard to balance both and I think we're quite uh strong on the whole values and Faith side we really take decisions that way I don't know any other Islamic company that goes into India it's a bit insane right we are doing it because we feel that there's a massive need uh regardless of the risks involved so that's a big part of our decision making when we look at that expansion also I mean at end of the day you as you scale you can use maybe profit centers like the US and the UK to pay for the cost of expansion really and you can amortize your your technology cost over all these different markets uh from a business perspective what you're doing also is really interesting um and this business again few things right cost optimization uh how lean can you be as you scale this business and how much AUM can you collect to charge uh the fees on where is what hit towards that billion dollar a mark where are you right now so so we're definitely there right so we're pretty big we're actually really big now and we're growing really fast so what's interesting is even though we're of the size uh which not many people even reach as retail asset managers we continue to grow Top Line at 100% a year which is insane uh at this size people don't do that right it's a snowball of money uh now back to the whole you know um countries thing so I I don't I wouldn't explain it as the Richer countries subsidizing the the poorer countries uh it may seem that way but what we've learned is if we take decisions for the right intentions somehow it helps out in the long run so if we were thinking only money we'd go to Australia Europe Canada right it's just the natural Rich there easy infrastructure so on so forth uh what we did for example Malaysia Malaysia if you were to look purely on data makes no sense for us to come into honestly speaking uh but what did we get out of Malaysia we were forced to optimize our server costing our efficiency for customer support we were forced to do these things to make money and because we did them here they got applied globally and that helped us tremendously so all these other guys who are only in the Richer countries they do not have the efficiency we do on the cost side because we were forced to figure out a way uh to run on such low margins uh and there's a very you know interesting case study actually that I remember of of Harvard Business School of the steel industry right in in in the US and uh there were these steel scrapers basically that existed and the steel scrapers would do the scrap metal right so to make money the margins were so low that they were forced to spend on technology and innovate to make money once they did that they took over the entire industry and the whole oligopoly broke and the reason that could happen is because they could make money off scraps so when they went to compete of the actual you know bigger players they would destroy them because they can't compete with the margins and that's how we're looking at this so we like the challenge of being able to make money out of dealing with a $100 client with a 100 ring client we can make money of someone with a 100 ring we can go and really take the entire industry if we have to and that's how we're built uh so I like taking good intentioned decisions I feel they have a really nice even economic effect in the long run in a in a in a funny way um Malaysia has forced you to become more efficient with your capital and uh I'm going to claim that we helped you get the profitability uh whether that's true or notely um in terms of uh whether it's a or Revenue right now between your three main markets the UK us and Malaysia what's the split like cuz you know one would assume that the higher currency markets might be bigger parts of your portfolio it's very uh interesting actually that's a perfect split in terms of Revenue and I'd say even Robo AUM basically and and the reason for that is uh Malaysia let's say has 10 times the population but one tenth the wealth per capita right of let's say America so they're richer but less clients and over here there's more clients but way less money for us we're a tech business there's really no marginal cost per client so uh as long as we're running that same Tech stack which we are makes no difference so it's really well split it's it's really oneir 1/3 one3 which is beautiful in terms of Revenue diversification Geographic diversification and again we think we can do this in 50 countries right Works in Asia Works in Europe Works in America uh the only challenge remaining as Frontier markets like Nigeria Indonesia uh it's going to be tough but if we can crack that we're we're done we can do 100 countries cuz that's something you tested yet right haven't tested yet we're licensed in Nigeria and Indonesia but we haven't launched there yet so we're going to find out that'll be interesting it will when we look at um your growth 100% on year right now that's I think something you said just now uh you got a good mix right now between develop and developing nations I mean between the three markets that you operate in right now uh with Dubai just entering last year um you've not you've also got an interesting product mix and you've uh why hasn't been afraid to acquire in the past I think estate planning products have been something that you've acquired uh a digital banking app in London as well what determines whether wad acquires versus builds because underlying all this is not just to be a robo advisor is to get rid of the interest bearing portion of uh a Muslims portfolio so our acquisition strategy is pretty straightforward it's it's purely commercial right so we look at okay what's our timeline where do we want to get to is this quicker and does it make economic sense so as any company would look at as an acquisition you'd see build versus buy and you'll see if you have any synergies for us we've come to a point where we could in theory acquire any asset manager or every asset manager and just consolidate because our efficiency is so much more than theirs right we have maybe one/ tenen the cost we have a better brand we have better infrastructure and we have the entire value chain so in theory we could just go acquire everyone and you'd add value just because your cost are lower you can scale and you can just cut their staff or whatever um the PE way right um so acquiring for us is either commercial or it's does it get us somewhere quicker now with the digital banking piece we acquired a you know a new startup in the UK called Nia and the reason we acquired them was actually for the infrastructure and their staff it was an aqua hire so you had a really good team perfectly place for this product we knew we wanted to do the product so it was just saved us a whole one year of hiring and building it up and you know it was made economic sense hiring is very expensive for these curated products especially for whole teams so it's common for companies to Aqua hire in terms of the estate planning and wills so in Western countries specifically um the Muslim Community has a problem because Islamic inheritance really prescribes specific rules of how you're supposed to disperse money on death and in the in Western countries once you pass away it's it's the law right so you have to curate your will if you're going to keep it Islamic and most people don't know that they don't do that so this was really allowing us also to protect the Muslim community's money to do it how they should and want to do it by acquiring this it actually a law firm and and they're the biggest ones in Islamic Estate Planning in the UK so we acquired them it was a perfect Synergy because they had wealthy people with Wills who needed Asset Management we had Asset Management client who needed wills and we think we can replicate the exact same thing in every country one of the key things you manage to optimize for here is customer acquisition which can be quite expensive for robo advisers because uh wisdom would be that you need a human to sell investment products how have you overcome that it's quite interesting so you know Financial Services in general has a very high cost of acquisition it's known for that and that's why Robo advisors majorly have not been able to be profitable or run profitable countries at all in fact it's it's very rare um our unique Advantage is the entire organic growth element right The credibility and the brand on the Sharia side that we've created so most of our acquisition if not all of it is referral based and organic so again we spend money on you know Global branding and that builds this tidal wave of of trust and referrals that uh allow our C to be ridiculously low uh so there's really no comparison with us and other industry players like we've seen the numbers you know with the investment Banks and it's just a world apart where maybe 1/10th the industry Norm if if not even less so I do feel a big reason for that is the product Market fit it's it's more of a need than a want product our clients are don't really have any other options they're looking for a way to keep their money shareer compliant and they have small amounts of money and where else are they supposed to go this is easy it's in your phone and it's the only option available to you so that's really driving that lowak and now you have the credibility you have the outperformance so for someone to uh try and compete with all of these barriers to entry it's it's almost impossible today especially with economies of scale if you look at our performance if you look at our cost structure uh if you look at our portfolios uh they're hands down you know better than the others for many different reasons one is if a bank tries to compete or a specific let's say government entity they're going to put their own funds in there and that's it they're not going to be independent and objective with all the funds so for us what we do as is our fiduciary duty is we scan the whole world for funds and we take the best ones and if ours isn't the best we don't put it so other players you'll see a bank they'll only put their Bank funds right so if someone wants that actual efficiency they want that combined with the really good UI and ux uh you're not going to really have many options you'll have maybe one other if there are any others I really can't think of any so that need is fueling a lot and then they tell their family they tell their friends uh the credibil is earned and we're really riding off that wave now the interesting thing is we're seeing that in every single country that organic growth which is not slowing down right so you have existing clients who are on recurring deposit so the a keeps growing then you have the client growth because of the referrals uh so it's a really nice growth factor that's just inbuilt into this business and I again feel it's a need more than one conventional guys can't do that because there's 50 competitors so why do I need you you have to be cheaper or you have to you know really push some crazy campaign on me otherwise what's the need we we don't have that problem now one of the uh bottlenecks with SH compliant investment products is just the universe of these products I mean you yourself had to go and build to ETF yourself um is that a concern as you scale this forward like are you going to have to continuously build your own products are you seeing other people build products that you can use we definitely see it as probably the biggest issue in the market and we're spending a lot of time continuing to create products in fact now that I have more time that's what I'm focusing on as well so if you look at the asset class Spectrum in Islamic Finance there's really not much at all this is equities Commodities and sukuk and and sukuk is just like a blanket fix income portfolio no one really knows what's in it it's really sad and scary and it's it's like the worst AET class in my opinion so our job is initially to try and make that specific fixed income piece more Sharia compliant and more efficient and when I say more Sharia compliant I can imagine it's a bit confusing uh it's because it is very contentious sukuk in general the structure so there's a lot of Scholars who don't agree with it there are some that do we want to be as strict as possible with Sharia compliance um but where do you go if you don't have sukuk right so you need diversification you need something as close to fixed income as possible and because Islamic asset management is a really small industry and there's not much money and contrary to popular belief it's not really growing so we do have to take it upon ourselves to try and create these nice new clean sophisticated products because we can it's a responsibility and we're absolutely working on that the fact that you have figured this out and you buil you've built a profitable business and you're growing so fast might invite other people to put their hat throw their hats in a ring it doesn't seem like you're too worried about the convent the the banks who might want to use their own funds in it what about other players who might look at this and say hey if you're if there's a margin here to be made the Bezos kind of quote like I'm going to eat that as well do you have enough of a hit start to kind of make sure that that doesn't happen to you that you don't get your margins don't get eroded so I'll tell you something interesting Russian so we actually have a ventures arm and we prioritize investing in potential competitors uh and that's not because we can't eat them or anything it's literally you know come at us there's really no one else there it's really weird it's been like you know 8 years uh and no one's been able to do this profitably it is an expensive business like you said we've raised a lot of money because you have to good luck getting so many regulatory licenses and building all this infrastructure and running an efficient credible shop uh without that initial capex now who in the world has that kind of money to put down and then to compete with us right so we're already quite far along people know our shareholder base it's it's ridiculously deep access to money uh so for any uh you know normal person or VC entrepreneur to say I'm going to head on against these guys who I have no idea how much you know money they have access to they're a little crazy it's it's a tough pill to swallow that being said we have a lot of local competitors uh we really like that we try to help uh people who want to be competitors so the ventures arm has a mandate if anyone wants to do something in genuine Islamic Finance we give them priority we we have funded many many potential competitors of us it sounds crazy but unfortunately no one's really able to build that uh scale that they need and the ventures arm is the equity crowdfunding arm correct so you uh the the community itself is investing in a lot of these businesses um to wrap up uh the conversation because I mean I wish we could go longer but unfortunately this isn't a podcast it's a radio show so we've got times to keep here um you've raised between $75 and $82 million over the last 9 years building this business your last valuation was packed at $300 million in 2022 um investors are going to at some point want some liquidity maybe maybe not depending on how deep their pockets are um is the isn't IPO the most logical uh path forward for you in the long term in terms of providing that liquidity uh liquidity to investors that may want it so you know we we surveyed uh our shareholders inally and the vast majority don't actually want liquidity because now we're entering the fun time right so if it works works in three countries it works in 50 countries right go go multiply this by 10 multiply by 50 we know we can so most don't uh a few uh very early investors like really minority um do want liquidity uh and for them it's still not their exit of the fund Horizon so there's a few years left and we do think the most organic way is an IPO that being said we're not a VC controlled company so no one can force us to do anything it's just our responsibility we took people's money we know it's a for-profit business and we represented certain things and we absolutely need to try our best uh to try try and bring them liquidity if it doesn't hinder business now an IPO for us is actually very wise not only for the liquidity piece the main reason is we actually want this to be a community-owned product we don't want random governments owning wah we don't feel that institutions can have the people's best interest in mind and we want the Muslim Community themselves to own W and the cleanest and probably the only legal way to do that is to IPO so that you are allowed to sell your publicly and then the entire extended Community can own the company almost like a Cooperative I feel that's the safest way for something we're trying to build I would not want our company to be controlled by uh Sovereign that who knows right might change leadership and do anything uh so we do feel an IPO is nice it's safe it brings credibility it brings PR it brings liquidity it brings everything we're really not price sensitive if you build a company with strong fundamentals and and nice long term Horizon no one cares about the value right it can be whatever uh so we do not optimize for oh can I get 100 million more here or there it it doesn't matter cuz if we're successful in our 10e plan 20e plan none of this is going to matter whether it's 500 million a billion 300 million makes no difference in life and I think people see that it'll just change irr slightly for an investor but really nothing material if it works it works uh and that's how we're seeing this in the meantime as you head towards that and you are next you got the fun times ahead do you need to raise more funding for the fun times ahead so we're in a weirdly good place where we don't right so that's why we can act tough and King of the Hill but yeah we haven't given up control of the company till today and now there's no way we plan on doing so so uh I I think if we do raise funds it would be only strategic like and by strategic I mean really strategic like someone who will bring nice diversification to the cap table or really help us Dr risk in some form uh obviously in in with our growth rates with our potential Market size you want to raise money but it's more of a luxury raise so it has to be on our terms and we're lucky we've been able to do that all along right but if we do uh as we are you know maybe in a few years to IPO right who knows when uh then you wouldn't want to really raise too much now you wouldn't want to dial you want to keep that open so we're in a good place we have time we get to try new things and and we can see J it's been a pleasure speaking with you I really do hope we get a followup conversation at some point um thank you for your time thank you Russ folks I've been speaking with jite waha he's the founder and chairman of digital Investment Management platform wahed and if you miss any part of the conversation you can catch the podcast on the bfm app bmm or wherever it is you listen to podcast just look for open for business I'm rosan KES and you've been listening to open for business here on bfm 89.9 The Business station [Music]